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A Real Data Center Silo

This week we’ll look outside the U.S. at some interesting data center developments in other countries. We start in Canada, where Compute Canada is being an innovative new data center in Quebec. The facility on the campus of Université Laval is being built inside a renovated van de Graaf silo, and features an innovative cylindrical layout for the data center. It’s one of two new facilities being built by Compute Canada’s CLUMEQ project, with the other site located in Montreal. Marc Hamilton from Sun recently visited the Quebec facility and blogged about it.

I don’t want to give away CLUMEQ’s design, but lets just say it leverages the fact that hot air rises. That, plus Quebec’s low power rates and climate suitability for free air cooling all contribute to a very innovative design. Look for the center to open later this year and share more details.

The Quebec cluster will feature more than 12,000 processors, with racks distributed among three floors of concentric rings. It will have about 2,700 square feet of rack space, with an IT power capacity of approximately 600 kilowatts.

About the Author

Rich Miller is the founder and editor at large of Data Center Knowledge, and has been reporting on the data center sector since 2000. He has tracked the growing impact of high-density computing on the power and cooling of data centers, and the resulting push for improved energy efficiency in these facilities.